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Just days after the Department of Education released Gainful Employment Informational Debt Measures and Gainful Employment Informational Loan Medians to institutions, GE is Dead!

On Saturday, United States District Judge Rudolph Contreras struck down Gainful Employment rules in a suit that the Association of Private Colleges and Universities brought against the Department of Education and Secretary Arne Duncan to challenge Gainful Employment rules.

Just days after NASFAA released it’s overly complicated version of an IRS Tax Return Transcript Matrix exclusively to NASFAA members, David Bergeron and the good folks at FSA made good on their promise to release one to the FSA community. In a simple to use, one page Excel document, the Ed version, compares the seven ISIR information items that may need to be verified for a student or parent who filed or will file a 2011 Federal Income Tax return to the item name reported on the IRS Tax Return Transcript as well as the corresponding line item numbers from the three 2011 IRS tax returns.

The February 24th, 2012 Electronic Announcement offers some guidance on interpreting the transcript as well – so aid administrators, pay attention:

…for some items the transcript may report two or three values. This is because the IRS calculates or recalculates the amount reported by the tax filer for some items. If only one value is reported on the transcript that value must be used for verification. If more than one value is reported on the transcript, the value associated with the item name that includes the words “Per Computer” must be used for verification. The “Per Computer” line should be used for verification even if it is different than what was reported by the tax filer.

The 2011 Federal Student Aid (FSA) Fall Conference will be held at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas, NV. It runs from November 29 through December 4, 2011.

This year’s agenda is packed full of useful sessions like Reporting Gainful Employment to NSLDS, Consumer Information Disclosures, Adding a new program, verification procedures for the 2012-2013 award year, and all sorts of sessions on cash management, COD and reconciliations processes.

Conference materials (PowerPoints etc.) are posted to the website for those who register and these can be valuable reference materials when you return to the office. My advice – plan to be in Las Vegas this year. And if you can’t go, register anyway to take advantage of the session materials once they are posted to the site.

For the last ten years, I’ve worked in higher education. I started out as a Financial Aid Advisor and worked my way up from there. For the last seven years I’ve been working for a mid-sized group of proprietary schools as their Corporate Director of Financial Aid. Until today, I oversaw the administration of their Title IV program across 30 campuses and for more than 10,000 students and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Today, I’m starting a new career as a consultant and blogger. I’ll still be working in the higher education space and of course, specializing in Title IV Administration. Those of you who know me are familiar with the daily FAST FACTS emails I’ve been sending out for a few years now, so if you liked those, you’ll like this blog too. In the coming days you’ll see articles, analysis and most importantly dialogue; all wrapped up into neat little snippets that are just the right size to get you through your morning cup of coffee. I know you’ll like my blog. I’ve got some work to do to get it ready so, check back tomorrow for an update.
Best Wishes,

Peter Terebesi
Be the change you want to see in the world. Make a Great Day!